there are women there, but they’re staff. They clean his house, they take care of the guests.”
Maggie chewed on a fingertip and looked down at the lapping water beside the boat. “No. I’ve seen the feeds. He did the same thing in Guadalajara. One of the women who survived his last brothel told us her story.”
Luther’s skin buzzed and he bounced on his toes. This woman didn’t know what she was talking about. He couldn’t afford to get sucked in to whatever pack of lies she had been fed. He had work to do.
“You’re obviously mistaken. There can’t be anything like that happening on my island, or I would know about it.” He pressed past her and the place where her skin touched his seared his arm, then traveled deeper.
Dammit. Why couldn’t he get a hold on whatever flukey lust bunny had decided to pop its head out of the ground? Every part of him wanted to grab her by the arms and hoist her up until her legs wrapped around his waist and he could bury himself inside her.
It was fucking weird.
Her footsteps pounded after him as he made his way back to the stacked crates. He took the gangway all in one long step and was back on the docks, pounding his way back to the stack of supplies that still had to get loaded so he could make his noon run out to the island.
“Luther. Wait.” She skipped around him and landed in his path.
He pulled himself to a stop and pursed his lips. “What? Haven’t you had enough story time for one day?”
“I know you’ve cleaned up after him. Six bodies in the last few weeks, at least, and probably more before that.”
Luther crossed his arms and glanced around the empty dock. “Yeah, well that’s the way it is down here in Mexico, sweetheart. You cross a boss like Adrian Rossi, you get handled. This isn’t Pretty Princess USA, okay? It’s the real world.”
He tried to step around her and she jumped back into his path. “I know what the world is like. And Adrian Rossi didn’t kill any of those men for insubordination.”
“How do you know that?”
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips and Luther found himself watching the movements of her mouth. Holy hell, he needed to get laid. Too long since the last time, and he was watching a girl’s nervous movements and thinking about how much he wanted to suck on that tongue.
Come on, Luther. Get a fucking grip .
“I know he didn’t kill them because I was the one who killed them.” Maggie said it so matter-of-factly, with a sad turn of her eyes. “The first ones, you would’ve found in the penthouse hallway, and then there were two inside, all in one day. The other two, we killed when we broke into the security room. Less blood that time.”
With every word she uttered, Luther’s shoulders tingled and his breath quickened. She knew the details of the murders. He shook his head.
“You couldn’t know those things. I cleaned up those bodies.”
“I know.” She shifted her weight from side to side. “I watched you do it.”
“How could you…” He tried to remember the details of those cleanups. He’d had to call Diana to send hotel staff—whom she had promptly had to fire. He would’ve remembered Maggie from the cleanups if she’d been there.
“We have a tap on his security system.” She shrugged. “I’ve been watching you for weeks now. We’re trying to find a way to get onto that island to save all the women.”
“I told you.” He gritted his teeth. “There are no women. I would know.”
Maggie cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “You really don’t know? You’re not just… No. You really don’t know.” She stepped toward him. “I promise you, we know that there are kidnapped young women on that island who are serving as sex slaves to this sadistic madman.”
Luther matched her step and they were so close, he could smell the flowery scent of her short, newly-washed hair. Dammit, man. Pull yourself together .
“And I promise you, it’s not happening.” He pointed over her